How to assign an action to a keyboard button

wrh1728 · 2022-11-14 00:48:57

I have a desktop system in which I am running Xfce 4.16. The keyboard attached to this system comes with two keys which are labeled in such a way that they are obviously intended to mute and unmute the sound infrastructure in my system. They do not - when I press them, nothing happens.

Is there a way to reconfigure those keys from Xfce so that they will work as expected? I understand that X provides a kind of low-level mechanism to do such a thing, but I was wondering whether Xfce offers something along those lines more end user-friendly.

ToZ · 2022-11-14 11:09:04

Are these the multimedia keys that require you to press the Function key with them?

If you run the following command, and then press those keys, do you get an output in the terminal window? And if so, what is the output?

xev | awk -F'[ )]+' '/^KeyPress/ { a[NR+2] } NR in a { printf "%-3s %s\n", $5, $8 }'

wrh1728 · 2022-11-14 13:54:44

Those are keys part of a little keypad to the right of the main keyboard - other keys in the same keypad are Insert, Home, PgUp, Delete, End, Pause, and PgDn. As for the command above, when I press and release them I get the expected output - e.g. for Delete I get "119 Delete". For the two keys that I mentioned I get no output at all.

ToZ · 2022-11-14 14:55:47

Its going to be difficult to assign an action to them if they are not recognized by the kernel or X. What is the make and model of the keyboard?

wrh1728 · 2022-11-14 14:59:22

IOGear Wireless Model GKM552R (K).

ToZ · 2022-11-14 16:15:33

As a quick test, can you go to Settings Manager > Keyboard > Application Shortcuts, and click "Add" to add a new shortcut. For the command name, just enter "test" and press OK to be prompted for the keyboard shortcut. At this point, click on one of those keys and see if its recognized/accepted.

wrh1728 · 2022-11-14 16:36:17

Thanks - that was a brilliant suggestion which actually solved the problem for me, in a way that I was not expecting. When I do as you suggested, one if the keys is identified as Audio lower volume, and the other as Audio raise volume. And that's indeed what they do! Looking into the labels on the keys, they are consistent with those actions, not with the ones I thought. The reason why I did not notice this before is because my sound system is muted by default - it is still the case that some web sites play strident noises when accessing them.

Anyway, your help is much appreciated, for it definitely put the issue to bed.

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#1 2022-11-14 00:48:57

How to assign an action to a keyboard button

#2 2022-11-14 11:09:04

Re: How to assign an action to a keyboard button

#3 2022-11-14 13:54:44

Re: How to assign an action to a keyboard button

#4 2022-11-14 14:55:47

Re: How to assign an action to a keyboard button

#5 2022-11-14 14:59:22

Re: How to assign an action to a keyboard button

#6 2022-11-14 16:15:33

Re: How to assign an action to a keyboard button

#7 2022-11-14 16:36:17

Re: How to assign an action to a keyboard button

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